posted at 4:01 pm on May 28, 2014 by Allahpundit

I’m late to this story but Mickey Kaus and David Steinberg are all over it. You know the background here: Eric Cantor, who’s been on the outs with House conservatives lately and who’s championed immigration reform for DREAMers for more than a year, is suddenly facing a surprisingly tough primary challenge in Virginia from Dave Brat, who’s attacked him for being soft on amnesty. How tough? Tough enough that Cantor recently ran away from Jeff Denham’s ENLIST Act for DREAMers despite having expressed support for it before. Tough enough that he’s now aired not one but two ads in his district attacking Brat by name, something a well-known incumbent is naturally loath to do against a little-known challenger unless he fears he’s in trouble. Tough enough, even, that Cantor’s team sent out a mass mailer to voters celebrating him as a, er … stalwart amnesty opponent.

Coincidentally, Democrat Luis Gutierrez, the House’s most vocal immigration champion, decided that today would be a perfect time to visit Virginia and protest Cantor for being such a hard-ass on amnesty. Which is funny because, as both Kaus and Steinberg note, Cantor and Gutierrez were part of a House delegation that toured America for three days last year to celebrate — ta da — immigration. They are, in other words, both committed to this cause. And if the cause requires them to pretend to be enemies temporarily in the name of protecting Cantor’s seat, so be it. Kaus knows kabuki when he sees it:

I thought it was weird when, a few weeks ago, Cantor put out an angry press release attacking Obama on immigration after what appeared to have been a pleasant phone call with the President. Cantor couldn’t be staging this fake fit in order to use it later in the campaign, could he? That would be too Kabuki! But, sure enough, Cantor’s new mailer cites the April phone call incident — even referring to Talking Points Memo‘s report on his press release. (“Cantor Torches Immigration Reform After Call With Obama.”) Tough guy–stands up to the President to his face in a sharply worded post-event memo.

OK, maybe there are some subtle things going on here, in the Kabuki space. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the Dems’ most flamboyant pro-amnesty crusader, has announced plans to hold a pro-legalization event in Cantor’s Richmond, Virginia ‘backyard’ tomorrow. This comes after other amnesty advocates decided to denounce Cantor by name as “the No. 1 guy standing between the American people and immigration reform.” It sure looks like Gutierrez (who has, after all, gone on tour with Cantor in support of immigration reform) and his allies realize that a shocking Cantor primary defeat would effectively kill off amnesty this year. So they’ve gone into action to help their friend win by setting him up as an anti-amnesty giant — a message that conveniently dovetails with Cantor’s mailer. It’s almost as if they have meetings to plan these things!

Bingo. What better way to sell Cantor as an anti-amnesty hero to skeptical conservatives in his home district than to have Gutierrez, who once said that his only loyalty is to the immigrant community, ostentatiously protesting him right in his own backyard? If Brat upsets the House majority leader by running hard against immigration, terrified House Republicans will head for the hills on immigration reform; protecting Cantor is thus the smart play for reform fans, but naturally Gutierrez has to play dumb about that since exposing the ruse would backfire on Cantor completely. That’s why, when Steinberg dialed up Gutierrez’s office and asked them if it wasn’t perhaps curious that he would choose to express his upset at Cantor at a time and manner that’s actually really helpful to Cantor politically, they dismissed the accusation as silly — despite admitting that they’re familiar with Cantor’s mailer.

And yes, Gutierrez did hold his rally today. With Cantor’s name prominently mentioned, of course, to reassure tea partiers who open up the newspaper tomorrow and see the photos that Eric Cantor is amnesty’s worst nightmare.

One benefit from Al Gore’s Internet invention is that lying crooks like Cantor get exposed. Hope the primary voters are not low information voters buying Cantor’s charade.

It is revealing and disheartening the total lack of integrity tricks the Republican establishment attempts to play on their voters. I expected it from the Ds and am silly enough to be shocked when the Rs do it.

Bingo. What better way to sell Cantor as an anti-amnesty hero to skeptical conservatives in his home district than to have Gutierrez, who once said that his only loyalty is to the immigrant community, ostentatiously protesting him right in his own backyard?

Fox News noted Dash sparked controversy during the 2012 presidential election when she endorsed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney on her personal Twitter account and “subsequently endured heavy criticism for supporting a conservative nominee.” Dash’s acting career has spanned more than 20 years, including playing Dionne in the 1995 movie Clueless, as well as roles in Renaissance Man, Mo’ Money, and View from the Top, among others.

IMO, Cantor an Boehner are but safe mouthpieces for the entire elitist GOP who not only wants and will put in amnesty, but have no intentions of repealing Obamacare.
Their only enemy is the base–the conservative citizens, and the tea party types.

Have the usual suspects turned up yet to tell us how important it is that we support such fine examples of GOP conservatism as the stalwart, true and trustworthy Eric Cantor.

I mean, he’s overtly lying about his position now that he’s in trouble, but if we just support him, he won’t flop immediately back to a amnesty-flogging piece of crap once he’s securely in office again, right?

Rove/Chamber can carpet bomb the airwaves with ads claiming their guy is a conservative, and low information conservative voters believe it.

commodore on May 28, 2014 at 5:09 PM

That is a big part of it and then they smear their opponent so any undecided low info primary voters play it safe and vote for the incumbent. Lastly, they never agree to a debate because that would really expose these scoundrels.

The big problem here is that Brat is woefully underfunded. There’s virtually no signs or bumper stickers anywhere, let alone paid advertising. Frankly, if it weren’t for Cantor’s ads, I probably wouldn’t have paid him any heed at all.

As for Cantor’s campaigning, it’s some of the most appallingly cynical stuff I’ve ever seen from any politician. Basically, we’re just told over and over that Brat is a “liberal college professor.” Literally the only proof he offers for the ‘liberal’ portion of this aspersion is that he once served on a board of economic advisers when Tim Kaine was governor.

Cantor clearly thinks the average primary voter is stupid. The sad part is that he may well be right.

Does Brat have a good chance of winning this? I haven’t seen any polls.

gracie on May 28, 2014 at 6:28 PM

Don’t think any polling has been done, although Cantor’s campaign likely has done some internal polling. Just the fact though that he is pulling this stunt with Gutierrez. as well as sending out blatantly dishonest mailers, would seem to indicate they consider Brat to be a serious threat to his reelection.

The big problem here is that Brat is woefully underfunded. There’s virtually no signs or bumper stickers anywhere, let alone paid advertising. Frankly, if it weren’t for Cantor’s ads, I probably wouldn’t have paid him any heed at all.

As for Cantor’s campaigning, it’s some of the most appallingly cynical stuff I’ve ever seen from any politician. Basically, we’re just told over and over that Brat is a “liberal college professor.” Literally the only proof he offers for the ‘liberal’ portion of this aspersion is that he once served on a board of economic advisers when Tim Kaine was governor.

Cantor clearly thinks the average primary voter is stupid. The sad part is that he may well be right.

2YEP598 on May 28, 2014 at 5:28 PM

Thank you for your local update, 2YEP598!

Your point about David Brat needing campaign donations is confirmed at the FEC.gov website.

I live in Cantor’s district and am voting Brat. I convinced a Democrat to vote Brat too, because she doesn’t like Cantor either! LOL Brat’s campaign is very grassroots, door to door. Again little money, but many are frustrated with any sitting congress critter right now. Cantor got fired up when his right hand man Linwood Cobb lost the chairman position to the Tea Party candidate at the 7th District GOP delegate convention a couple of weeks ago. According to our local Tea Party group, Cantor’s team booked any and all empty rooms at the hotel where the convention was to be held to block the Tea Party from having a place to talk to people, and the Tea Party still won. There’s no D on the ballot as of yet because the D candidate missed the filing deadline (and he’s AWFUL – he did an interview with Greta on Fox a month or so ago). It will be Cantor and Brat competing for the R. Cantor’s ads are awful, all attack, I’ve gotten at least 4 of them in the past few weeks. They say Brat’s a liberal because he was appointed to a fact gathering committee that provides reports to the governor. Brat as I understand it wasn’t in a position to stop any decision the governor was making, he was simply one of several in an advisory role, whose advice the governor could follow or not. Cantor fails to mention that Brat also served a Republican governor (McDonnell) who did pretty well for the first part of his term, but what exactly is an advisor supposed to do to stop a Democratic governor from raising taxes??? They do that as naturally as they breathe and blink!

We are our own enemy. The majority don’t educate themselves on who they need to vote for. Ohio – voted to send Boehner back to Congress. Kentucky – voted to send McConnell back to the Senate. A number of other states have voted to send Rove’s and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce candidates to Washington. FOX News should be ashamed for giving him a platform.

– The U.S. Chamber is our enemy because they want Amnesty forced down our throats to lower wages for their corporate members.

– The U.S Chamber also wants Obamacare left in place so it takes the Insurance tab off of their corporate members.

Again voters are not paying attention. And now the state of Virginia will listen to the commercials that money can buy for Cantor and most likely send him back to Congress to be the thorn that he is in every sane Americans side.

Unfortunately I’m in the 5th (which I occasionally take) and not CANTors 7th. So guess I can’t”legally” vote for Brat.
Guess I’ll have to cheerlead on this one.

I have talked to several dear friends who are in the 7th. They are all going to pull the lever for Brat. Out of 3 households that’s 10 votes for B-man.
One even vows to take ol’ Bessie off the mantle(in case of a CANTor win) and demand Brat run anyway.

I just sent Dave Brat a donation. If a GOTV campaign can help him then maybe he can beat Cantor. The biggest challenge I think will be Democrats crossing over to vote for Cantor to ram amnesty through. If you have friends in Virginia time to email them and ask them to help out. If not, then time to put some positive discussion of Dave Brat on web sites in Virginia to get his name out there. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet!

Every time we have a successful candidate, the media and the progressives can undermine them. They put words in their mouths, and do what they can to alienate the base.

Just like at the republican presidential debates they frame the question to please the media and the liberal campaigns. “The Childern” “Anti- immigrant” “Anti Women” and the media megaphone plays it up. So our side can’t say they believe in immigration because they have to qualify and qualify and qualify what they say because the enemy is manufacturing sound bites to defeat them…and to alienate you. Eric Cantor never had an immigration problem until they started badgering him, and he said he was not against immigrants and went on the tour. Virginia is a difficult place, just look at how Cuccinelli had to parse to please everyone, and the libertarians ran around the other side to skewer him.

It wasn’t time to run Cantor off the rail. These people in Virginia should be worrying about pushing their Senate candidate thru. After a long day trying to spoil a SAFE seat, do they have time to campain for the state house? do they have time to get their GOP Senate candidate elected? Time to get off your behinds, GOP and libertarians of Virginia and make GAINS before you purge.